Worker rights

Workers from the Pou Yuen Cambodia garment factory in Sen Sok district yesterday protested outside the premises after the management decided to offer them only three-month contract extensions. ...

Employers must allow all Muslim women to wear headscarves and traditional clothing to work, Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday. Addressing workers in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district, Mr Hun Sen said he met Muslim women on a recent visit to Kampong Cham, who told him they ...

The Ministry of Labour’s spokesman yesterday said that free medical treatment for garment workers, announced by Prime Minister Hun Sen last week, will start on January 1. ...

In yet another potentially major new benefit to Cambodian workers ahead of next year’s national election, Prime Minister Hun Sen on Sunday announced that employees in some of the country’s key industries would soon be able to receive free checkups and treatment at state hospitals. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen again met with garment sector workers yesterday, adding a boost to maternity leave salaries to a range of promises he had made to them on Tuesday. ...

An international alliance of NGOs has started a campaign to urge two prominent U.K. clothing retailers and a Canadian brand to compensate 208 factory workers who lost their jobs when the Chung Fai Knitwear factory abruptly closed a year ago. ...

Domestic workers and NGOs yesterday urged the government to ratify a UN convention to protect domestic workers’ rights and freedoms, and to regulate their working conditions. ...

Workers from Shude Garment Co, Ltd, protested in front of their factory yesterday in Kampong Speu province’s Chbar Mon town after their employer vanished without paying their January salaries. ...

Local garment sector stakeholders failed to find common ground at a meeting on supply chain safety protocols, with the government and employers expressing reluctance to take on an additional level of responsibility. ...

Ten pro-government unions on Friday released statements in support of Cambodia’s recently passed Trade Union Law, just days after two independent unions held a meeting to discuss hoped-for changes to the contentious legislation. The independent unions met last week to compile a list of amendments to ...

Female workers are still being paid less than their male counterparts on construction sites, while building companies value male construction workers as more skilled than women, according to a CARE Cambodia report released Friday. CARE’s research paints a comprehensive picture of the situation of women working ...

A workers’ strike escalated on Monday at Sihanoukville’s Angkor Beer-producing Cambrew factory, protesters said, with the company acknowledging that the work stoppage was causing major disruptions. ...

Under Cambodian law, the right to organize is supposed to be ironclad. No employer, government agent or citizen may impede union activity. Inside the walls of Cambodia’s largest special economic zones (SEZs), however, In These Times’ reporters saw a system designed to tightly control the workforce by ...

Almost 100 workers from the Chung Fai Knitwear FTY factory in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district gathered in front of the Municipal Courthouse again yesterday, demanding the court issue an arrest warrant for the owner of their factory, who fled the country last month and has ...

The Kampot Provincial Court on Thursday released three union leaders without charge after the Cambo T.D.G. garment factory dropped its complaint against the trio in return for an end to a two-week strike. ...

Cambodia made the list of the 10 worst countries in terms of labour rights, according to a report released last week by the International Trade Union Confederation.   ...

The Ministry of Labour met with Malaysian-owned Global Apparels Limited factory representatives, union officials and workers yesterday, to negotiate an agreement for compensation as the company closes down.    ...

Asia’s economic success has been carried on the shoulders of poor women, whose higher load of work has been unequally compensated and undervalued, according to an Oxfam report released on Tuesday.   ...

A senior official at the Labor Ministry said strikes and protests were “disrupting” investment in the garment sector and claimed that some unions, and even some employers, were not respecting the rights and freedoms afforded to workers by the Labor Law and international labor conventions. ...

Cambodia has the third-highest prevalence rate for modern slavery in the world, trailing only North Korea and Uzbekistan, according to the Global Slavery Index 2016, released this morning by the Walk Free Foundation.   ...

Labour rights abuses are taking place at Cambodian supplier factories for US clothing retailer Gap Inc, according to a new report, the latest in a series aimed at bringing attention to perennially poor conditions in the Kingdom’s garment industry ahead of the International Labour Organization’s ...

Negotiations between former drivers of the Capitol Bus Company and their ex-employer, mediated by Prampi Makara district authorities, yielded no settlement yesterday, although both parties agreed to continue talks.   ...

Fifty Dangkor district security guards removed their uniforms in front of the district hall yesterday morning in protest for better pay and conditions.   ...

Officials at the Ministry of Justice will join members of the Labor Ministry, local authorities, police and provincial governors on the Committee for the Settlement of Strikes and Demonstrations after a union leader requested they be included. ...